


Once a Law Student, Now a Princess

by phoenixyfriend



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Dreen Gift AU, Family Feels, Fluff, Gen, Isekai, Original Character(s), Politics, Self Insert Fic, except it's not a SELF insert just an insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2020-12-31 00:47:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21025217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixyfriend/pseuds/phoenixyfriend
Summary: Stephanie Juarez dies at the age of twenty-five, just a semester from taking the bar exam. It’s a common enough reason: an undetected medical issue caught too late to really save her. An aneurysm. A beeping monitor and family being told she’s brain dead and deciding to let her go.It’s a common story and a common ending for a common girl.Then she wakes up, as one does, to life anew.





	1. Goodbye, Stephanie -- Hello, Seffie

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, there's just... a lot of me writing Family Feels this event week. This one was for:
> 
> Oct. 13: Niche Crossover/AU Day
> 
> Which, in this case, is me writing a SPIN-OFF of my OWN AU, which is the Dreen-Gift thing and just. Listen. It's a hole I spiraled down and I blame gelpens.

Stephanie Juarez dies at the age of twenty-five, just a semester from taking the bar exam. It’s a common enough reason: an undetected medical issue caught too late to really save her. An aneurysm. A beeping monitor and family being told she’s brain dead and deciding to let her go.

It’s a common story and a common ending for a common girl.

Then she wakes up, as one does, to life anew.

o.o.o.o.o

_Xerxsephnia von Blitzengaard._

The name is a mouthful. She doesn’t like it. But “Seffie” is what her new brother calls her, and it sounds just barely close enough to “Steph” that she rolls with it.

Her brother. Her impossible brother for her impossible situation.

Martellus.

He’s a fictional character, as far as she’s concerned. _Was_ a fictional character. It’s complicated. He hadn’t had a sister in the story she’d read in her off-hours to relax after an exam. He’d had some brothers, and she’s caught glimpses of them since coming to this world, but Martellus is the only one that takes the initiative to actually spend time with the little girl that can barely sit up on her own. It might be that he’s the oldest, and thus feels like he’s obligated to take care of the younger ones. She wants to pretend that it doesn’t matter why he cares, except it _does,_ because she’s seen his older self commit crimes and hurt people, and she needs to know how much of that is arguably a necessary evil of the setting, and how much of it is just complete bullshit.

She’s too small to change the world, but she feels a fire in her soul from how much she _wants_ to.

(There are rumors, here and there. People almost like her, from worlds beyond with no sparks but a timeline just shifted enough that everyone’s from the twenty-first century. Transplanted souls and bodies, immune to pain and damage and so _different_ from what everyone expects that she can’t help but believe that they were sent there by the same forces.)

(She is not a Dreen Gift, because she died and was reborn, but she is close. She is… just a little off.)

Seffie is a quiet child. She is serious and solemn and seldom makes trouble, until she understands enough French and Romanian to know that she is worrying the people around her. She forces herself to act more carefree, to play and chatter and indulge in things like clinging to Martellus whenever he’s around. It’s annoying in some ways and amusing in others, and ultimately it makes people ignore her just a tad more. It makes her safe.

For now.

o.o.o.o.o

Seffie keeps a tight lid on her political opinions. She’s young, after all, and not expected to think anything different from her parents and father and—well, she’d certainly cause a fuss if she started arguing about democracy and constitutional monarchies, about how dictatorship and monarchy were ultimately liable to cause such damage to the people and places they controlled that they would be overthrown by revolutions simply due to the anger caused in the wider population by the inability, both perceived and actual, to influence the course of their lives and world in relation to how their taxes were used and what they felt they should or should not be allowed to do.

Force wouldn’t control a country forever. Charisma was a short-term solution at best. They might last decades, even centuries, but the time is coming where even sparkhood isn’t going to keep a country under its thumb without a hell of a lot of time spent on bureaucracy and, at _minimum,_ oligarchal distribution of power and responsibilities based in part on prior experience and capability.

And, okay. She knows her family hates the Baron. She’s not too fond of the idea of an empire with a tyrannical dictator either, she _knows_ how poorly that can go. Power corrupts, yada yada. Her focus in school was on legislative lobbying. Minority advocacy, specifically. She’d had _plans_ and those plans had been of a kind that very much rebelled against autocracy and iron control.

But she also knows this world is different from her own, and while the Pax Wulfenbachia isn’t great by her own standards, it’s _light years_ beyond most of this world, especially the rest of Europa. She grits her teeth and smiles and ignores her parents gossiping about the ‘upstart nobody’ who took what was ‘rightfully theirs.’

She almost says something, as often as not. She rarely actually does, but she wants to see what their faces would do if she piped up with ‘of course the Empire is a bad idea. A single ruler with no regulatory body or checks and balances is liable to become short-sighted and unable to consider other viewpoints. He should set up an electoral system to allow the states under his control to send representatives voted on by the populace without coercion by their current rulers towards one representative or another, so as to provide information on what outlying and unheard portions of the population consider subjects worth addressing, like public health and safety, or communications networks for emergency services.”

Yeah.

That wouldn’t go over well.

Seffie is young, pretty, and too clever by half.

She is not a spark.

She is something even rarer.

\--

Seffie finds out that Tarvek has gone to the castle in the sky and gotten sent home again, and that they’re trying to figure out who to send instead. Zulenna’s already been shipped off, and they’re wondering if they should curry favor by sending someone else.

So Seffie maybe throws a tantrum until they agree to send _her._

“Why do you want this so much?” Martellus asks her, as he helps her pack. There are maids to do it, but Seffie had gotten snappish and angry when they’d suggested it, and got her own way to do it herself. Martellus had inserted himself into the equation, but that bothered her much less than the servants.

(She’d fought tooth and nail to get into Columbia. She’d worked multiple jobs to pay her tuition. She’d planned on going into one of the least-forgiving law careers possible.)

(She wasn’t going to let that silver spoon she’d been born with in this life tarnish the work ethic she’d honed in the last one.)

Seffie bites her lip and leans forward. She’s—well, she’s a baby, compared to the rest of her generation. Even Tarvek is a year older than her. She can’t be sure that Martellus is going to really _listen_ to her, but he’s looking attentively, and she has to tell him _something._

“I want to be the best at politics,” she finally says. “The future of Europa is going to be there. Not every leader in the coming years, but many of them. I want to make all the alliances I can, all the friends and enemies, and get ready to change the world.”

He looks at her, brows narrowed, and then stands up.

“Wait here.”

She keeps packing, letting him do whatever it was that he felt like doing. She hums as she does so, ditties from her old life that she never, ever wants to forget.

(What had been the name of the muse that sang from past and future, played every instrument that existed and a few that didn’t? She couldn’t remember if it had ever been mentioned at all.)

(The story had been about Martellus, the anti-hero at the core of the world she’d enjoyed reading about. The story had been about the Storm King, but Martellus’s Right-Hand Muse had been Prende, the Guiding Hand.)

(The story had not been _about_ the muses, as she suspects it might have been, had it followed Tarvek instead.)

Martellus speeds back into the room, arms full of something incredibly fuzzy.

It’s a… lion toy. It isn’t a construct, just fabric and stuffing and incredibly detailed stitching on the little Storm King coat it wore.

“This is… cute,” she finally says. “Where did you get it?”

“You like it, right?” Martellus asks, sounding oddly earnest.

“I don’t know if I would pick it for myself,” she says. “But it’s very cute.”

Martellus shifts oddly. “So… you _don’t_ like it that much?”

She frowns at him. “I do like it. I just don’t have a lot of toys. Did you… try to find it special for me?”

Martellus doesn’t meet her eyes, and his cheeks tint pink. “…d it.”

Seffie tilts her head. “What was that? I didn’t he—”

“I made it!” Martellus bursts out, eyes squeezed shut.

Seffie looks down at the little lion, and feels something in her chest start burning.

_Oh._

“I…” she stares down at it. “Not a bear?”

“You like lions better,” Martellus mutters.

“Where did you get the coat?” she asks, running her fingers over it. Oh, she feels all squishy about this. It’s very soft. She’s gonna cry.

“I asked the seamstresses to show me how,” he says, fingers twisting over one another. “Turns out that embroidery makes you poke your fingers a _lot.”_

Seffie looks up at him. “You just… you made this for _me?”_

“You’re going to Castle Wulfenbach,” he says. He looks at her like maybe _she’s_ the one that’s weird about this. “You gotta have a going-away present, right?”

She looks back down at the lion. “So you… you _made_ it?”

“I’m not lying!”

“I’m not _saying_ you are!” She says. She rubs the mane of the lion. “I’m… it’s just…”

She catapults herself forward and wraps her arms around his neck.

“You’re my _favorite brother, _you know that?”

He hugs her back, soft and careful with the little sister he wasn’t, as far as she knows, ever supposed to have in the first place.

“Thanks, Seffie.”

\--


	2. School Should Not Be This Complicated, and Yet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's hard to go to school with a bunch of Rich People when you are also a Rich People, but have the memories, opinions, and unadulterated rage of someone who was decidedly not a Rich People, and also kind of thought Rich People were the worst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seffie gets political. There is shouting.

Seffie keeps her chin high and her skirts neat. Her hair is pinned back, her shoes are shined, and she’s not wearing makeup, because cosmetics are a sign of poor upbringing on girls her age, in this time. She doesn’t mind that part so much, and she knows how important a first impression can be. She is a princess, and she is not a spark, and that means that her reputation will rely on her blood, not her brain. She’d heard as much from Tarvek, and the single letter she’d received from Zulenna between sending word of her attendance and actually leaving.

Seffie doesn’t know Zulenna very well, actually, but she knows that the girl is older than her and has a fair bit more honor than… almost anyone else in the family, actually. A little bitchy, from the scant lines the novels had afforded her, given that she’d died far away and in another country, for Martellus. Still, family was family, and Zulenna was the best Seffie was going to get on that front, if one didn’t include her brothers or Tarvek.

(Tarvek was… an interesting case that was only going to get _more_ interesting, really. Time was going to change him. That wrench in all the plans, Agatha Heterodyne, _she_ was going to change him. The Baron’s son would change him. But until they got to him, Tarvek was going to drown in his own fear and reticence, burying his moral compass where he didn’t have to look at it when there was nothing he could change without dooming himself in the process.)

“Xerxsephnia von Blitzengaard. Welcome to Castle Wulfenbach,” a tall blonde in head-to-toe leather says. There’s some red lens over her eye, and very spiky teeth, and Seffie wonders if the bondage gear is a _choice_ or… well, masters and constructs, really. All sorts of things could be seen as choices without _being_ choices. “I am Mistress Von Pinn, the teacher of the school on board.”

Oh. Oooooooooh. Von Pinn.

Otilia.

That was a whole _thing,_ wasn’t it?

She only kind of remembers this being a plot. Martellus hadn’t met the Muse of Protection in his own canon until… well after the timeskip, when the bubble burst. She’d been a giant metal lion then.

Seffie curtseys, shallow enough to maintain her own status and deep enough to show respect for an elder. “Pleasure to meet you, Mistress Von Pinn.”

The woman nods sharply, and turned in a manner that was even sharper than that. “Follow me.”

Seffie tucks her hands behind herself, and does so.

She keeps a sharp eye on the hallways around her, trying to drink in every last detail. Castle Wulfenbach is a small city unto itself, and it wouldn’t do to get lost in it. She’s been in bigger, of course—Manhattan alone was, what, one and a half million at the time of her death? Two million? Twenty mil across the entire metro area, which isn’t functionally even a turn of phrase that _means_ anything yet—but even a few hundred thousand is not exactly a small town.

Though.

The books hadn’t ever actually specified how many people were on board.

“Mistress Von Pinn?” Seffie asks. “How many people live aboard the airship?”

“Aboard Castle Wulfenbach, approximately one and a half thousand, though the number fluctuates as needed. There are entire platoons coming in and shipping out, depending on the current status of the empire. There are between five hundred and seven hundred and fifty personnel in various roles at any given time and _what_ are you doing?”

Von Pinn snaps around again to demand an answer from Seffie, who has, for her part, managed to freeze in the middle of the hallway, because everyone’s been calling this a city, _already,_ down on the ground. It was all through the books, that Castle Wulfenbach was called many things, some disparaging, but most often the Airship City. The flying home to so many that it could be called a metropolitan center of the empire.

And she’s sure it’s going to grow, but the nickname already exists, and there are still only _two thousand people?_

“That is _not_ a city,” she said, as severely as her tiny body could manage. “That is a town. A small one.”

The corner of Von Pinn’s mouth quirks up, and with the shape of her face and her teeth, it’s hard to tell if that’s a hint of a smile or a dash of disdain. “It is the largest airship in existence.”

“A city, even a small one, is a minimum of—of what, a hundred thousand people? Even large towns are a minimum of ten K. We’re looking at _two percent_ of a city here. This is not a city. It’s a small town. This is a _complete_ misuse of anthropologically and legally defined terms,” Seffie huffs, crossing her arms and glaring up at the woman who had, prior to becoming a giant metal cat, been so known for her defense of the children in her care that it had even made it into the books that had barely thought to mention her time from them.

(Goodness, Seffie _loves_ Martellus, but she can’t help but admit that she’d have had more information that’s actually _useful_ if “Rise of the Storm King” and “Lightning in the Crown” had been about someone else.)

“As it is the capitol of a burgeoning empire,” Von Pinn says slowly, “It became a city as soon as the Baron agreed to declaring it one.”

“…that’s a strange way to phrase it.”

“He didn’t declare it himself,” Von Pinn says, with that not-disdain-but-not-smile again. “Someone suggested it, and he allowed it because it streamlined some of the paperwork. Legally, this is a city.”

Seffie feels her face twitch in pure irritation.

“I’m done talking about this,” she decides. She starts walking again. “If I keep talking about it, I’m going to want to find whoever suggested this and argue with them.”

“I would stop you before you made it that far, child,” Von Pinn says, in a way that’s simultaneously assuring and something of a threat. That’s cool. Seffie’s not even four feet tall yet, and she’s not going to make the same mistakes Tarvek did. _She’s_ not going to come across as a threat, and she’s not really going to pick fights either.

She has a government to study, pick apart, and piece back together in preparation for every scrap of complete nonsense that’s coming her way.

\--

She doesn’t room with Zulenna, which is almost surprising, except for how it completely isn’t. The Baron isn’t trusting enough to room _two_ Valois kids together, even if one of them is as honorable as anyone in the family gets. Instead, Zulenna’s rooming with some girl called Mingmei, and Seffie’s got Sleipnir O’Hara. Sleipnir has the kind of name and hair Seffie would have associated with Ireland, and not a lick of the accent, which makes more sense after Sleipnir cheerfully tells her that her father’s the king of the Irish Diaspora.

(Duh, Seffie chastises herself. She should have known. Should have guessed, at least. Remembered that such a thing exists. Ugh, she has so much _work_ to do.)

Classes are more advanced than the same age in her old world, but still feel trite and a little backwards. It’s not even 1880 yet, after all. A lot of what she’d have considered normal just straight-up doesn’t exist yet. She’s lucky enough that germ theory is around—though she can admit that she has _no_ idea how old germ theory was in the real world—and there’s other stuff, but overall she spends quite a lot of time biting her lip and trying not to pick a fight about DNA.

It’s such a science-heavy course-load, too. She fidgets in her chair as often as not, the pure energy of a child combatting the boredom of a humanities kid forced to sit through reruns of effectively-middle-school classes that she hadn’t cared for much the _first_ time around, either.

She keeps an eye on Gilgamesh when she can, but ultimately ends up ignoring him as often as not. He’s probably close to breaking through, and quite frankly, she doesn’t want to be around that bull. She’s heard stories of Martellus’s breakthrough. She’s not interested in seeing something like that.

This doesn’t even touch on the fact that, if she _does_ try to befriend Gil for whatever reason, she’s probably going to get expelled even faster than Tarvek did, and she’s got absolutely zero interest in that, thanks. The Baron will find an excuse to get rid of her, and just—ugh. She’s not going to waste her chance to influence continental politics on befriending a single sad kid. She doesn’t have time for that shit.

What she _does_ have time for, however, is asking Mistress Von Pinn for a copy of the Pax Transylvania’s laws, which is currently a few dozen pages long with several appendices. She goes through a page or two every night with a red pen and a sheet of paper on the side, making notes on what she thinks could be done better, on what she thinks leaves gaping loopholes for people like Uncle Aaronev, and on what she thinks maybe really _does_ need to be expanded a little. Legalizing prostitution is all well and good, but the system doesn’t address the ways that sexual assault of a sex worker is to be handled, which seems like a grievous oversight to her, because she’s _seen_ the case studies in her own world for how that can go wrong.

Sleipnir gives her funny looks sometimes, but that’s fine. It’s whatever. Sleipnir’s, like. Eight years old. Maybe nine. Seffie doesn’t feel like caring about her opinion.

Partly because she misses her brother, partly because children’s opinions shouldn’t matter to her, and partly because the entire act and _pretense_ of childhood is, quite bluntly, draining as fuck.

She wants to kick back and binge a season or How to Get Away with Murder or something with a cup of—well, not any kind of alcohol, given ‘genetic risk factors’ and other things she knew in theory but cared more about in terms of policy than in terms of how it affected her—a hot cup of tea or something. Or hot chocolate, maybe, that sounds nice.

…that might just be the single-digit-age-body rearing its head and giving her sugar cravings, though.

Dammit, she misses Netflix.

\--

Seffie gets into a fight with another student, ends up standing on her chair in an attempt to just _shout him down,_ because raising taxes on the middle class while espousing a belief that the wealth in the upper classes will make its way down _naturally_ to their employees is _fucking stupid_ and relies on a belief in the better nature of man that simply _isn’t present_ in anyone that has that much money.

If they have morals, they’ve already invested their money in making the world a better place. Simply claiming that they’re _going_ to share the money, _maybe,_ if the government just lets them _keep some,_ is useless.

Alternately, it’s self-serving, which is worse, because at least ignorance can be excused, with the _malicious manipulation of the system at the expense of potentially millions of—_

She gets kicked out of class and brought before the Baron.

Great.


	3. How To Disappoint Your Family in One Easy Step

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Seffie gets a little more open about her opinions, and Zulenna despairs, and also the Baron has an uncomfortable conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: while nothing is explicit in the text, there is discussion of the legal code in regards to many things, including rape, ages of consent, Romeo and Juliet laws, and related topics. All is addressed in the abstract from the view of someone arguing for policy-making, not in detail or anecdote.
> 
> There's also a lot of politics, particularly in the vein of 'eat the rich.'

Klaus Wulfenbach is not a small man.

This is something of an understatement, but there are larger people around in this world, and Seffie isn’t exactly great at judging heights from her current vantage point. She is very small.

She is also sitting on a chair that’s too big for her, arms crossed and legs swinging.

She said she wasn’t going to get in trouble, and yet, here she is.

The Baron finally puts down the papers he’s been shuffling, and Seffie straightens her spine and puts her hands in her lap.

He laces his fingers, and watches her.

(She desperately tamps down the part of her that wants to reference Star Wars and ask the Baron who goes first.)

“You seem to have a fascination with penal code currently in use in the Pax.”

Seffie blinks at him.

He holds up one of the sheets, and she recognizes her own handwriting.

“Um,” she says, and then she can’t keep meeting his gaze. She drops her head and looks at her shoes.

“In particular,” the baron says, “I’m seeing quite a bit of frustration on your part that many of these laws are, in your own words, assuming the better nature of people in positions of power, rather than putting into writing the specifics.”

“Uh… yes?” she says. “It’s… um… it feels like much of penal code and laws of taxation were rushed.”

“Ah, yes. The incident in the classroom that Von Pinn described to me today,” the Baron says. “I’m assuming you do, in fact, understand that you are among the wealthiest people in Europa.”

Seffie feels herself make a face.

She is, in fact, aware.

“You called it… trickle-down economics?” the Baron asks, glancing down at his notes.

“Yes, sir.”

He looks up at her, and there’s an expression she can’t quite identify on his face. “I’m not sending you home for getting into a heated argument about a topic that is evidently very dear to you.”

She does not say ‘you sent Tarvek home,’ because that was a _very_ different circumstance. She’s sure he can guess what she’s thinking, but she’s not going to make it any easier on him.

The Baron sighs. “I’m not upset by the argument you engaged in. I’m not a head teacher, and you didn’t break any laws or security protocols. What I _am_ is someone who has a vested interest in ensuring that the next generation of Europa’s leaders have the best interests of the continent and populace in mind, not just the opportunity to line their pockets and plates. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

She looks at the book on his desk, one she can’t identify from her angle, but can guess is probably her annotated copy of the Pax’s current laws.

She fidgets, and finally says, “You approve of my opinions?”

“Many of them, though I feel some are… overly optimistic of the general populace’s willingness to cooperate,” he says. He grimaces, then. “A fair voting system only functions until a spark decides to build a construct army to swing the vote in their preferred direction, and then we end up with a whole mess of defining at which point a construct can be considered an adult based on their mode of creation, which constructs are considered sapient members of society like the Jägerkin, and which are effectively animals like mimmoths, and how to test for individuality and free will beyond their creator, because being influenced by their creator is no different than being raised with certain values by a parent, but the built-in loyalty and control some sparks tend to is…”

He shakes his head. “I was only given your notes a few minutes after I received word of the incident. It would be fair to say that I’m impressed by the level of thought you put into your annotations for your age. Many adults would not have thought to address some of the peculiarities of marginal tax systems and what you termed ‘off-shore tax havens’ to this degree, though I do worry about your exposure to such things as the sex trade, given the detail you put into the legalization of prostitution.”

Seffie fidgets. She wonders if he’s noticed how angry she is about some things. Probably.

“You are not the only student to have taken issue with the laws,” he says, and she wonders if it’s meant to feel like the kind of gutpunch it is. “You are, however, the first to have taken issue with the fact that loopholes exist, not that they are too small for you to jump through. I’ve spoken with Madame von Pinn, and while you are not a Spark—”

_Thank fuck, _she thinks.

“—the degree of skill here warrants placing you into the altered curriculum we usually reserve for those who break through, with the elective spaces for specialized, one-on-one tutoring in the area of interest,” he says. “If the tutors, or Madame von Pinn, think that any of your ideas show promise, they may choose to present them to me for assessment and implementation. I can tell you there are already a few here that I’d previously considered, or am already in the process of introducing. Your thoughts, though they certainly aren’t in line with mine on all counts, are significantly developed enough and generally compassionate enough that I would like to encourage growth. For most students, we will be working to teach ethics and compassion for the citizens they are to lead first, but as it appears your grasp on _that_ is only in need of being tested, if not simply accepted as sufficient on the basis of what you’ve displayed here… I’ll let the tutors adjust as you move forward, rather than drilling you on it.”

For someone who insists he’s not a school principal, he sure is acting like one.

“Thank you, Herr Baron,” she mutters, eyes on the floor. She still feels like a little kid in trouble.

“Prove it was a sensible decision,” he says. “And remember that if you _do_ attempt anything like what your cousin did, there actually _will_ be consequences.”

Aaaaaaaaand there’s the Powerful Rich White Man dickery.

“Of course, Herr Baron,” she says, instead of snapping about how Tarvek was eight, not some horrifying threat to Gil’s safety, or saying something about how she doesn’t need to hunt for info on Gil’s background when she already knows it. Seffie knows a lot of things, and she’s not an official interdimensional information transplant, the ‘Dreen Gifts’ that are peppered through history as soothsayers and prophets, and she doesn’t have a Gift’s protections. She can be hurt, and killed, and can’t back up her story about being from Somewhere Else, especially when her loyalty is compromised by _being_ a von Blitzengaard.

She doesn’t say any of that, because she can’t. She just acknowledges that breaking the rules will get her sent home.

\--

Xerxsephnia von Blitzengaard gets a reputation, and that reputation mostly boils down to NOT being the person one wants to have an argument with about legal matters or public policy.

The tutors they assign to Seffie are constantly frustrated by her insistence that allowing individual cities and regions to self-govern to the current extent is a stopgap measure at best. She can recognize the need to leave them alone for the time being, maybe even for a few years to come, but it’s not actually an _acceptable_ status quo. She argues with Beetleburg’s propensity for a horrible, slow death in response to minor infractions as her usual example, and picks at least one fight about putting laws about equality is all well and good but does _nothing_ without a more extensive system to enforce they’re upheld. Are there services in place to confirm misogyny isn’t playing a role in university admissions? Female sparks are rare enough that nobody’s going to let women in just because there’s a risk of a rage-fueled breakthrough blowing up the admissions office.

She almost screams when she realizes how shoddy the Romeo and Juliet laws are. They exist, at least, which is _great_ because that means minimum ages of consent _and_ laws for statutory rape, but enforcement is done by individual vassal governments, and when she asks, she’s told that at least half a dozen have laws in place that a sentence for statutory rape can be lessened or even thrown out completely if the rapist marries the victim.

The victim doesn’t need to agree to it; she (and the example they pull up from a region a couple dozen kilometers west of Sturmhalten is very clear about the gendering here, and does not acknowledge that female-on-male rape is a possibility) only needs the parents’ permission. If the parents agrees to dropping the case in favor of a marriage for preserving honor, it gets dropped. If the victim disagrees and wants charges to still be pressed, if the victim _does not want to get married at age fifteen,_ it doesn’t matter.

There are no laws in place yet to manage the age at which someone can get married _with_ parental permission.

She writes up ‘practice’ bills and legislation every week for the tutors to look over, laws for tax distribution and private businesses held by public officials, regulations for food and drug quality requirements, medical ethics courses as legal requirements to practice. She at one point writes a lengthy essay on minimum wages and how a public official’s pay should be directly in proportion to the minimum. After all, there’s no way any individual bureaucrat can work a hundred times harder an hour than a miner or cook or sanitation worker; placing a firm cap on pay where a public official cannot make more than ten times the minimum wage seems fair.

She then segues into worker protections and possibly setting up an OSHA. The tutors scratch their heads and look over her writings and say they’ll think about it, but the empire doesn’t really have the resources to enforce anything at this level yet.

It’s true, of course. She doesn’t _like_ it, but the empire is small and new and shaky as hell. Right now, a lot of the money is still going into firepower, and the firepower is mostly aimed at taking down major Wastelands threats and the sparks that are still running rogue. The situation is objectively better than what it was a few years ago, and she’s reminded that this is one of those situations where there are so many problems going on at once and so many people that don’t _want_ those problems to go away that sacrifices _have_ to be made.

It’s frustrating as hell.

“Would you give up all your own money and power in pursuit of these ideals?” a tutor once asks her, and it’s aggressive enough that she knows he’s hoping to corner her with a ‘gotcha’ question.

“Not until providing change on an institutional level,” she says. “My money and status currently provide me with extreme financial and political leverage, which can eventually be used to institute the kind of changes necessary to implement widespread equalization. To divest myself of my money and status, upon reaching an age where I have access to them would provide a short-term fix at best, especially since so much of the money I currently have access to and can channel into inciting these changes isn’t actually mine. I can help more people in the long term if I focus on pushing for legislations that taxes and redistributes the wealth of those who gained it by taking advantage of lower classes, whether as politicians over-taxing citizenry to line pockets instead of funneling the money back into infrastructure or welfare programs, or by merchants and corporations squeezing the labor of their employees for every last cent and then paying them as little as they can get away with so they can keep the profits for themselves.”

The tutor hits his head on the table, and tells Seffie that today’s session is over.

(She doesn’t get taken to meet the Baron again, but there are more than a few talks with Von Pinn about maybe not torturing the tutors so much.)

\--

Zulenna decides to start making fun of Gil again one day, and Seffie is tired.

Zulenna’s having a bad day, really. She’s never been great at science, and everyone knows she’s not the kind to ever become a spark. Neither is Seffie, for the matter, but everyone’s a little less sure of her. Zulenna’s the one that scored lower than expected on the magnetism exam, though, and she knows people are talking behind her back about it. She takes it out on whoever she can rank lower than herself, whoever has no spark and lesser peerage, to try and regain some control.

It’s understandable, but so, _so _annoying.

She doesn’t… actually remember the question she’s asked. She can’t actually be sure it was Zulenna asking it, either, or maybe Sleipnir. She’s a little sleep-deprived, honestly, and focused on the text she’s annotating for history class.

What she does know is that someone mentioning that, since she’s a princess, she ranks higher than Gil and Theo. Theo’s going to be a spark, and everyone can tell, but he hasn’t broken through yet. Gil _has,_ but nobody knows that yet.

Seffie doesn’t look up from her text, just groans and says, “What does it even _matter,_ monarchies are an obsolete form of governance _anyway.”_

There’s a long silence for a moment, and then Zulenna groans and swears and says, “Not _this _again.”

Seffie still isn’t exactly crowing her opinions from the rooftops around family, but at this point it’s hard to hide it from Zulenna. She’s kind of given up, actually, and while Zulenna isn’t exactly a fan of her opinions, she’s not going to tattle back to the family.

“You… don’t think monarchies work?” Theo asks, just a little hesitant.

“They’re inefficient at best, and rely entirely on the monarch inheriting the title having the best interests of their citizens in mind, instead of being a self-serving piece of trash,” Seffie says, finally looking up. “And besides, the entire concept of inherited wealth is harmful, so the idea that a royal person should be able to inherit more fortunes than any so-called peasant could earn in a hundred lifetimes is so completely effed up that I can’t stand it.”

Theo looked at the rest of the room, and nobody reacted beyond staring at Seffie or gesturing for Theo to go ahead. Zulenna has her face buried in her hands, but that’s fine. She’s gotten used to Seffie being a little… odd.

“But… _you’re_ a royal person?”

“Your point?” Seffie asks.

“Are you… planning to reject your title or something?”

“Not until I dismantle the entire system,” Seffie grumbles. She turns back to her book.

“This is why nobody in the family wants to invite you to parties anymore,” Zulenna tells her.

“Good, send my portion of the food to homeless shelter,” Seffie says. “Better yet, send it all.”

“God_ damn_ it, Seffie,” Zulenna groans. “I know I haven’t told anyone, but if they find out about your whole… ‘class traitor’ thing—”

“Viva la revolución,” Seffie says, half-heartedly pumping a hand in the air. “Eat the rich, etcetera.”

Zulenna puts her face back in her hands.

“So, uh… I guess we know you’re not going to get involved in the posturing,” Theo mutters. “You know, I knew you were a lot, but I don’t think I ever realized you were this… extreme.”

“It’s not extreme to have compassion for the less fortunate,” Seffie says idly. “Though many would _love_ to convince you that it is.”

“I… can’t think of a response,” he says. Seffie glances over, and almost laughs at the sight of Gil peeking over Theo’s shoulder. She’s pretty sure Gil’s going to end up being the taller of the two, but he’s still tiny right now. “I don’t think there _is_ one.”

“Sure there is: helping me dismantle the system and build it back up again into something better,” she says. Then she shrugs. “Or at least staying out of my way while I do it myself.”

\--

It comes down to this: Seffie is the weird kid with too many opinions, which is basically what she’s always been anyway. She stays in this role for years, and every time she goes home for a visit with her family, she hears them whisper about how the Baron is radicalizing her. She doesn’t even share _most_ of what she thinks, when she’s home—she doesn’t want to get cut off before she can even _do_ anything with all that money—but what little she says is still too much for them.

She casually informs them that she’s the one radicalizing the Baron, and she can hear more than one brother slapping his forehead in response to the claim. Her parents just look at each other, helpless, and Grandmother laughs and calls her closer to explain just what she means. She’s under no illusions about how much Grandmother does _not_ agree with her, given her treatment of the servants, but Seffie babbles along about welfare policy and infrastructure instead of marginal taxes and dismantling the aristocracy.

Nobody at home agrees with her, of course, but she’s used to that sort of thing. She’s managed to worm her way into the good graces of the highest political power on the continent, and that counts for a lot.

By the time Seffie is seventeen, she’s built up a ton of goodwill with the Baron and… basically closeted herself from her family, both on the politics front and the sexuality front. Her relatives tolerate her, mostly, but they all seem to think she’s going to grow out of this anti-monarchy nonsense. Her brother is going to be held up as the new Storm King, after all. She’d be a fool to insist otherwise, right?

Martellus begs her to not mess this up for him. She promises she won’t, because she already knows he’s kind of going to mess it up himself—he takes offense to that, but in the fun way that makes it clear he knows it was meant in jest—and so long as he promises to use his newfound power to implement some of her policies.

It’s almost funny, how completely she’s got him wrapped around her finger, even at this age. It’s a joke, mostly, but he still _dotes_ on her as the youngest and only girl, and it’s enough that she can make him sit down and read the things she considers absolutely necessary. He’s trying, and even if it’s only for her, it’s still better than him going with whatever policy the family suggests, or whatever is _technically_ in service to the public, but not enough to compromise his own power and wealth over them. Better than the self-serving nonsense she’s a little scared they’d get if he earns the crown and listens to the things their parents have been drilling since they were in the singe digits.

But seventeen is a great age for a lot of reasons, and one of the big ones is university. Most of the students don’t get to leave the ship for more than a week or two of family visitation at the time, but _Gil_ gets to go to Paris for college. Seffie already knows that Tarvek’s going, too, and Seffie’s itching to go back to Grandmother’s for more than a fortnight, and learn what _real_ policy looks like in the modern world for a city like that.

(It’s still a tyranny, of course, but Europa is different from the real world, and Seffie reminds herself all the time that Sparks make truly equal societies difficult to maintain. Implementing medical ethics and forcibly destroying systems like Beetleburg’s public executions by bell jar can come before untangling the nature of construct independence and maturity for voting rights.)

That goodwill with the Baron is important, because it’s the only reason she can schedule an audience with him and put in her request to go to Paris for university.

He blindsides her by asking if she’s chasing after Gil.

She blurts out before she can so much as _think, _“Pretty sure I’m gay?”

He stares at her. “…you’re… happy?”

“Er. Um. Slang. For, you know… homosexual?”

He suddenly looks exceedingly uncomfortable. “Ah.”

“So, uh, no. Not chasing after—” _your son_ “—Gilgamesh.”

“I see.”

This is deeply, deeply awkward.

For everyone.

“Should I assume this accounts for some of your earlier focus on equality of marriage?”

“Some. Not much. I get intense about many things, Herr Baron. Few directly affect me.”

(At least in this life, where she’s a rich white girl with blue blood. Her past life, as a working class queer Latina… not so much.)

He grants her the option of going to university. He does not meet her eyes.

She supposes that’s what anyone deserves for digging into love lives that aren’t publicly their business. At least if Gil was _openly_ his kid, he’d be able to justify that whole conversation.

He’s lucky Seffie already knows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically, someone in the GG universe COULD work to produce a hundred times more value than an entry-level employee, but you'd be looking at a lot of extra mechanical arms in that case.


End file.
